1. Home/
    2. Archives /
  2. News

Archives For News

Free open-source software updates and Linux news

VLC 2.1.0 (Stable) Released, Upgrade in Ubuntu 13.10

Last updated: September 27, 2013

VLC 2.1.0 stable has been released with numerous improvements, new features and bugfixes. 2.1 is a major upgrade for VLC, named RinceWind.

Below is the announcement in VLC website:

VideoLAN and the VLC development team are glad to present the new major version of VLC, 2.1.0, named RinceWind

With a new audio core, hardware decoding and encoding, port to mobile platforms, preparation for Ultra-HD video and a special care to support more formats, 2.1 is a major upgrade for VLC.

Rincewind has a new rendering pipeline for audio, with better effiency, volume and device management, to improve VLC audio support.

It supports many new devices inputs, formats, metadata and improves most of the current ones, preparing for the next-gen codecs.

Rincewind fixes around a thousand bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 140 volunteers..

At the moment of writting this tutorial, the release note is still 404 page. I’ll add the link once it’s OK.

Features:

AUDIO:

  • Rewritten audio core, allowing better volume and device management.
  • Rewrite of the audio modules, to adapt to the new core.
  • Correct support for multi-channel layouts in all formats: 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1
  • New audio outputs for Windows Vista, Android, iOS, OpenBSD and OSSv4.
  • New remapping, gain, stereo widening, downmixing effects.
  • Higher samplerate, precision, live configuration in the core.
  • Numerous new audio metadata format supported.
VLC new audio core

VLC new audio core

VEDIO:

  • Port the OpenGL output to OpenGL ES.
  • Support color conversion shaders in glsl on Android and iOS.
  • New outputs for OpenMax IL on mobile and Decklink Blackmagic.
  • New video outputs for iOS using OpenGL ES2.
  • Support for deinterlacing for higher bit depth and XYZ colorspace.
  • New anaglyph filter for side-by-side 3D.
  • 4K-ready :)

CODECS:

  • Add hardware decoding for OS X using VDADecoder.
  • Add hardware decoding for Android using MediaCodec.
  • Add hardware decoding for GNU/Linux using VDPAU.
  • Add hardware encoding for Windows using Intel QuickSyncVideo.
  • Support for G2M4, MSS1, MSS2, TSCC2, CDXL, Ut, VBLE video codecs.
  • Support for Ulead DV audio, Indeo Audio Coder, RealAudio Lossless audio.
  • Support for SCTE-27 and complete EIA-608 subtitles

faster video decoding

FORMATS:

  • Support for fragmented MP4, Wave/RF64 files.
  • Extended metadata tags and cover art support in Ogg, AVI, MP4 and MKV.
  • Support FLAC, Atrac, ADPCM, DV Type 1, 12bits DV audio in AVI.
  • Extended support for AVI, MKV and MJPEG streams.
  • Better recording of AVI and MKV format.
  • Audio fingerprinting using AcoustID.

INPUT AND DEVICES:

  • Support for screen input on OSX Lion and later.
  • Support for Microsoft Smooth Streaming, developed by Viotech.net
  • New RTMP input module, using libavformat!
  • Support for VNC/rfb and Remote Desktop view-only modes.
  • Important improvements on Blu-Ray, Dash, v4l2 and HTTP inputs.
  • New AVFoundation OS X and shm framebuffer inputs.

FOR ANIME FANS:

  • New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1.
  • Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders.
  • Improved MKV support for seeking, and resiliancy.
  • Editions support in MKV.
  • Better subtitles and metadata support from MKV.
  • Various ASS subtitles improvements.

FOR MOBILE:

  • Port to Android, from 2.1 to 4.3, on ARMv6, ARMv7, x86 and MIPS.
  • New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS.
  • Partial port to WinRT, for Windows 8, 8.1 and WP8.
  • OpenGL ES optimized outputs.
  • Improvements of OpenMAX IL decoders, encoders and renderers.
  • New audio, video outputs and interfaces for mobiles.

VLC on mobile

FOR DEVELOPERS:

  • libVLC and most modules are now LGPLv2.1+.
  • libVLC media framework can now be used in all types of applications.
  • libVLC SDK packages now exists, in addition to more examples.
  • Improved libVLC API, for better control.
  • VLC’s web plugins now support windowless mode, for smoother integration with HTML elements.

VLC 2.1 release note.

The VLC stable PPA is ready for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy. Due to dependency problem, you can’t install VLC 2.1 on Ubuntu 13.04 and older editions.

Run below commands one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to upgrade to 2.1.0 in Ubuntu 13.10:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc
In News ,
 

Task Coach Todo Manager landed in Ubuntu 13.10’s Software Center

Last updated: September 24, 2013


As you may know, Task Coach is a free flexible open source todo manager featuring hierarchical tasks. It grew out of frustration about other programs not handling composite tasks well. In addition to flexible composite tasks, Task Coach has grown to include prerequisites, prioritizing, effort tracking, category tags, budgets, notes, and many other features. However, users are not forced to use all these features; Task Coach can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.

Task Coach has reached 1.3.32 with lots of bug fixes. It has been added to Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy’s universe repository, so it can be easily installed via Ubuntu Software Center.

For Ubuntu 13.04 Raring and earlier version, deb package can be download at sourceforge.net

In News , ,
 

PAC manager 4.5.3 adds support for SOCKs proxies & Perl 5.18

Last updated: September 21, 2013

PAC Manager 4.5.3 has been released with bug fixes and improvements. This tutorial shows how to install / upgrade it in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

As you may know, PAC is a Perl/GTK replacement for SecureCRT/Putty/etc. It provides a GUI to configure SSH/Telnet connections. The latest release 4.5.3 has following changes:

  • Added support for SOCKs proxies!
  • Added support for defining proxies configuration PER CONNECTION! :)
  • Added an option to “Auto save” every PAC change in realtime, without user interaction
  • Added preliminary date/time information on disconnections
  • Added support for Perl 5.18
  • Fixed a minor bug with PAC substitution variables
  • Changed PAC’s behaviour to prevent password from appearing on “ps” command for RDP (both rdesktop and xfreerdp commands)

Install PAC Manager 4.5.3:

Download the Deb and double-click to install via pop-up Ubuntu Software Center.

pac-4.5.3.2-all.deb

Or you can run below commands to install the downloaded package in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/pac-4.5.3.2-all.deb; sudo apt-get -f install

Enjoy!

In News , , ,
 

Clementine 1.2 Gets Great New Features, Install it in Ubuntu

Last updated: October 15, 2013

The Music Player Clementine 1.2 is coming with cloud services. It adds support for Subsonic, indexing & playing music from Box, Dropbox, Skydrive, and Ubuntu One. Add remote control support for Android and Playlist tab to the sidebar.

As well as the above main features, Clementine 1.2 also contains below new features:

  • Add configurable blur & opacity to album art when used as a playlist background.
  • Support Opus where available.
  • Support .mka and .oga file extensions.
  • Parsing support for WPL playlists.
  • Sort providers by user preference.
  • Add year and bitrate to MPRIS2 messages.
  • Add “not equals” operator to fields in the smart playlist wizard.
  • Add an option to write ratings, play count and scores to files.
  • Add options to show the rating and score on the OSD.
  • Add support for POPM tags.
  • Add support for FMPS tags in Ogg, FLAC, MP4 and ASF files.
  • Compile the bundled Taglib with ASF, MP4 and Opus support.
  • Make it possible to cancel cover searches.
  • Add an option to resume playback on startup.
  • Add support for Performer and Grouping tags.
  • Add Radio GFM.
  • Add an Apply button to the settings dialog.
  • Make it possible to mark all episodes of a podcast as new/listened.
  • Add an option for fading in/out on pause/unpause.
  • Add stereo balance slider to the equalizer.
  • Add a –restart-or-previous commandline flag.
  • Allow files to be transcoded directly from the playlist.
  • Export downloaded album covers
  • see changelog

Although this is not officially 1.2 yet, it already works completely flawless Clementine 1.2 stable is out! Packages for Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Debian wheezy, squeeze, Fedora, Windows are ready!

Download Clementine on Google Code

You can also add the Clementine PPA to get it on your Ubuntu system when it’s ready. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clementine

Enjoy!

In News , , ,
 

Linux Kernel 3.10.11 Released, Install / Upgrade in Ubuntu Linux Mint

Last updated: September 8, 2013

The Linux Kernel 3.10.11 has been released. All users of the 3.10 LTS kernel series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible. Here’s how to install or upgrade in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

This maintenance release introduces ARM, x86, and PowerPC fixes, as well as many updated drivers, including Nouveau, i915, iSCSI, and a few wireless ones. See the official announcement.

Install / Upgrade Kernel 3.10.11:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands to download the DEBs.

for 32-bit system:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.11-031011-generic_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.11-031011_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-image-3.10.11-031011-generic_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_i386.deb

for 64-bit system:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.11-031011-generic_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.11-031011_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.11-saucy/linux-image-3.10.11-031011-generic_3.10.11-031011.201309080217_amd64.deb

Then install them via below command:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.10.11*.deb linux-image-3.10.11*.deb

If you’re not comfortable with command line. Download & install the Debs from the kernel ppa.

In News , , , ,
 

Audacious 3.4.1 Released, Install it in Ubuntu

Last updated: September 6, 2013

The Audacious music player has released version 3.4.1. It mainly fixed below bugs:

  • no gapless playing with ALSA output #314
  • .minipsf looks for .psflib one directory level up #316
  • Tray icon missing after restarting xfce4-panel #317
  • Neon plugin fails to play stream over proxy with authentication. # 319
  • Buffer size too small for HVSC songlengths db #326
  • no metadata display for opus files #329
  • metadata updating failed and other weird tag issues #332
  • file writer flac does not write tags #334
  • Fix skinned ui not being drawn properly with gtk-3 >= 3.9 #336

Install Audacious in Ubuntu:

The Webupd8 Team PPA has updated the packages for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives, such as Linux Mint and Elementary OS.

To install it, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below command to add the ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

Then install / upgrade Audacious via:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install audacious audacious-plugins

That’s it. Enjoy!

In News , ,
 

Choqok 1.4 Now Supports for Twitter API v1.1: Install it in Ubuntu

Last updated: September 5, 2013

The Choqok micro-blogging client has updated to version 1.4 which brings back the Twitter support. Identi.ca support has been removed from StatusNet plugin.

The developer announced in the official website:

Sometimes ago we had two bad news, Identi.ca service switched to pump.io software and dropped it’s API, so Choqok is no longer support Identi.ca service, but it still supports StatusNet websites, because StatusNet is not died. About Identi.ca support, right now there’s no one working on pump.io support as I know, so unfortunately there’s no promise on supporting it again.
And in Twitter land, they turned off support for API v1.0 which Choqok was using, and so with this update Twitter support is back to Choqok.

other changes:

  • Support for Twitter API v1.1 (Thanks to Daniel Kreuter for his effort on it)
  • “mark timeline as read” menu item added to tabs context menu (Lim Yuen Hoe)
  • Show “in reply to” in twitter search timelines (Lim Yuen Hoe)
  • Identi.ca support removed from StatusNet plugin, we still support StatusNet
  • And some other minor fixes

Install Choqok 1.4 in Ubuntu:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands to install the client in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:adilson/experimental

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install choqok
In News , , ,
 

Linux Kernel 3.11 Released: Install / Upgrade it in Ubuntu 13.04/12.04

Last updated: September 3, 2013

Linus Torvalds has announced the Linux Kernel 3.11. Here are the new features and how to install / upgrade new kernel in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

Linus Torvalds wrote on the mailing list:

As some people noticed, I got distracted (“Ooh, look, a squirrel..”)
and never wrote an announcement for -rc7. My bad. But it wasn’t
actually all that interesting a release apart from the date, and it
had a silly compile error in ohci-pci if you hadn’t enabled
CONFIG_PM_RUNTIME, so we’ll just forget -rc7 ever happened, ok?
Instead, go and get the real 3.11 release, which is out there, all
shiny and ready to be compiled and loved.

Since rc7 (ok, I lied, it happened) there’s been just small fixes.
Most of them came in from the networking tree, but there’s some all
over: some random filesystem fixes, a couple of sound fixes, a
/proc/timer_list fix, things like that. Nothing really stands out
(unless you happened to use the new soft-dirty code, that had a buglet
that could really hurt), but let’s hope we don’t have some silly
configuration that doesn’t even compile this time around.

Shortlog appended.

Linus

The Linux Kernel 3.11 Features:

Graphics:

  • The DRM driver changes dominate the Linux 3.11 kernel! The big feature is Radeon dynamic power management support has finally come to AMD’s open-source driver along with early support for the Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” GPUs. Phoronix tests have shown Radeon DPM is successful at improving power use and lowering temperatures while delivering great performance.
  • There’s a new DRM display driver for the Renesas R-Car SoC.
  • Intel Haswell improvements and Valley View / Bay Trail support is now ready for Linux desktop usage.
  • H.264 / MPEG-2 video decoding for Nouveau with select NVIDIA GPUs bearing the VP2 engine as part of the PureVideo HD support. This is exposed in Gallium3D via the VDPAU state tracker. There’s also early GK110 GPU support. The NVIDIA GK110 is the firm’s latest high-end Kepler GPU.

Disk / File-System:

  • LZ4 compression support.
  • Zswap was merged for compressed swap caching.
  • Various XFS file-system improvements.
  • Performance tuning for Btrfs.
  • F2FS file-system updates.
  • EXT4 file-system updates.
  • The Lustre file-system client was merged for the first time.

CPU:

  • AVX2 Crypto optimizations.
  • PowerPC improvements from IBM.
  • Continued ARM improvements.
  • Xen and KVM virtualization now work for 64-bit ARM.

General Hardware & Miscellaneous Improvements:

  • Input device improvements.
  • Lots of audio / sound improvements.
  • With Linux 3.11, Wine can now handle Windows RT applications.

Download & Install Linux Kernel 3.11:

The Kernel PPA has updated DEB packages for Ubuntu and its derivatives. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands to download the DEBs.

for 32-bit system:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.11.0-031100-generic_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.11.0-031100_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-image-3.11.0-031100-generic_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_i386.deb

for 64-bit system:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.11.0-031100-generic_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-headers-3.11.0-031100_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/linux-image-3.11.0-031100-generic_3.11.0-031100.201309021735_amd64.deb

For both 32-bit & 64-bit, run below command to install them:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.11.0*.deb linux-image-3.11.0*.deb

Once installed, restart your computer!

If you have problem with this kernel, run below command to remove it:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.11.0*

Read More:

Linux Kernel 3.11 announcement

Kernel 3.11 on kernel ppa mainline

In News , , ,
 

Fotoxx 13.09 Released: Install it via PPA in Ubuntu 13.04/12.04

Last updated: April 4, 2019

As you may know, the digital photo editor Fotoxx updates every month. Here I’ll show you how to install and keep the latest version in Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and their derivatives via PPA.

So far, the latest release is 13.09. With it, you can edit photos and manage a large collection. Includes thumbnail image browser and navigator, RAW file import, a comprehensive set of edit functions working in deep color, fast full-image feedback, multiple undo/redo, select/copy/paste, file versioning, batch transforms, HDR and panorama composites, metadata edit, fast search and display, named image subsets (views). Read the changelog.

Install Latest Fotoxx:

The getdeb repository provides Fotoxx packages for Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 13.04. You can add the repository by downloading and installing the Debs from the below link:

download gedeb package

After that, you can install fotoxx and receive updates by Synaptic Package Manager or by running below commands in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install fotoxx

For other Ubuntu editions, such as Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 10.04, etc. Download the deb packages from the official site.

In News , ,
 

Avidemux 2.6.5 Released: Install / Upgrade in Ubuntu 13.04, 12.04

Last updated: September 1, 2013

The Avidemux video editor has reached version 2.6.5 with improvements and bug fixes. This tutorial shows how to install or upgrade it in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04 via PPA.

As you may know, Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file formats, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, ASF and MP4 using a variety of codecs.

Avidemux 2.6.5 has below changes:

  • libva hardware decoding
  • xvba hardware decoding, ported from xbmc, experimental
  • Re-enabled 64bits windows build using octave
  • Only lock job database when adding a job
  • Fixed the doubled fps bug on mpeg ts
  • Fixed positive and negative audio shift having the same effect
  • Windows : Better drag n drop support
  • Added back save/load video filter set
  • Dv encoding
  • Fast, superfast and ultrafast x264 preset by bernd_b
  • Support for 10bits h264 decoding
  • Much improved speed for downmixing
  • Updated libav*
  • Plenty of bugs fixed

Intall Avidemux via PPA:

For Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and their derivatives such as Linux Mint 13 Maya, 15 Olivia, Elementary OS 0.2 Luna. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one to add the ppa:

wget http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb

For Linux Mint users, you can read this post to add the GetDeb repository

To install the editor, run below command:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install avidemux2.6
In News , ,